A Kubatana subscriber shared with us her experience of going to get her monthly supply of ARVs:

Yesterday morning I was at Parirenyatwa Family Care Clinic (the Opportunistic Infections [OI] Clinic) to pick up my monthly supply of ARVs. As is the norm there were many of us there by 8am – the staff always insist that all patients be there at 7.30am. At 8am one of the counsellors came to the front of the group and asked anyone with a chorus or song. The request for a song means a Christian song as it is the start of a Christian devotion. I am not sure if this is a hospital regulation – and I always wonder about people of other faiths and what they make of this. However, I think whether they like it or not, they have to go through with it as they need the free life-saving and life-long antiretroviral medicines which are unaffordable for many citizens. There were two more songs after the first one, then the counsellor asked if any one patient would volunteer to pray. After the prayer, the counsellor asked if any volunteer wanted to share their story on how being on antiretroviral medicines had assisted them. One woman among the patients stood up and shared how she started antiretroviral therapy in 2005 when she was very ill, and that now she was fit and able to do all her work and chores at home. After the woman finished speaking the counsellor asked the patients to state one thing they had learnt from the story. A few people made some contributions.  The counsellor asked for another volunteer to give a testimony. When no one volunteered she asked for one adolescent to speak. When none of the adolescents volunteered, she just picked on one girl and asked her to speak about her experience with ARVs. The girl seemed very reluctant, but ended up speaking very briefly and in a very low voice. This particular picking on adolescents left a very bad taste in my mouth. The adolescents were highly outnumbered by adults in the reception hall. I felt it was not appropriate to put them on the spot like that, but rather have them share among themselves in their own space. The counsellor is supposed to be a professional and should not coerce people into sharing when they are not ready. It does not matter that we are all in the same clinic for the same condition – our levels of emotional preparedness to tackle personal issues in the public arena are all different, and there is need to acknowledge some people will never get to that level.

MT, Harare

This entry was posted on May 19th, 2011 at 11:13 am by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.